Porto

“ Without making any stay here, the admiral proceeded on till he put into Porto Bello, to which he gave that name because it is large, well peopled, and encompassed by a finely cultivated country. He entered this place on the 2d of November, passing between two small islands within which ships may lie close to the shore, and can turn it out if they have occasion. The country about that harbour and higher up is by no means rough, but cultivated and full of houses a stone throw or a bow-shot only from each other, and forms the finest landscape that can be imagined. ”

“ It is fortified by a high stone wall, mounted by a considerable number of guns, which were formerly only on the land side, but have now been added to the side next the sea. The city has vast trade, being the staple or emporium for all goods to and from Peru and Chili; besides that, every three years, when the Spanish armada comes to Porto Bello, the Plate fleet comes here with the treasure belonging to the king and the merchants, whence it is carried on mules by land to Porto Bello, at which time, from the vast concourse of people, everything here is enormously dear. ”

“ The horror which the Portugueze feel at sacrilege is perhaps hardly conceivable by those who are not acquainted with them. The governor himself, on this occasion, joined the populace in their outcry, and immediately gave orders that no vessel should be permitted to pass the castle. The news soon reached Porto, exaggerated as it passed from mouth to mouth; a mob collected, bent upon putting the French to death ”

“ Porto Vecchio is a spacious haven, capable of containing a very large fleet. It is five miles long, above a mile and a half broad, has a great depth of water, and a good bottom, and being landlocked on every side, is well sheltered from storms. I may add, that nature has placed a high and rocky mountain like a stately column to point it out at a great distance. In short, Porto Vecchio may vie with the most distinguished harbours in Europe.
The only objection to it, is the badnecs of its air, occasioned by the marshy grounds which lie in its neighbourhood. ”

“ I am I confess much surprised at the manner of your letter with regard to my taking up money at Porto. I went there ill, and had no means of getting a farthing any other way. Expence with servants was inevitable, and when I was forced to pay 40 guineas for a horse unexpectedly, I was unable to remit to Porto, as I told Pedro I should, and desired him not to send the account home till he heard from me. I do not at the same time deny that I spent more than I absolutely need, but it was under particular circumstances, and intended to have been paid by my Bat. ”

“ The former (late eleventh century) relates that an Arab expedition sailed from Lisbon, shortly after the eighth century, and named Madeira and Porto Santo the 'Islands El-Ghanam and Rákah.' However that may be, the first Portuguese occupants found neither men nor ruins nor large quadrupeds upon any of the group. ”

“ I chartered one of the chunky little tubs which you saw in Curaçao, engaged three Papiemento-jabbering negroes and a cook and cleared for Porto Cabello, giving it out that I was on a collecting cruise along the coast.
“It took me six days to slam that old tub against the trade to Porto Cabello, about eighty miles in a straight line; weather just as it is now—as it always is down there—the wind dead ahead and blowing the top off the water, and the sky bright and clear and blue. ”

“ It is generally held that the discovery of the Madeiran group (1418-19) was the first marking feature of the century which circumnavigated Africa, and that Porto Santo was 'invented 'by the Portuguese before Madeira. The popular account, however, goes lame. For instance, the story that tried and sturdy soldiers and seamen were deterred from advancing a few miles, and were driven back to Portugal by the 'thick impenetrable darkness which was guarded by a strange noise,' and by anile fancies about the 'Mouth of Hell' and 'Cipango,' reads like mere stuff and nonsense. ”

“ On the 16th of January, 1832, we anchored at Porto Praya, in St. Jago, the chief island of the Cape de Verd archipelago.
The neighbourhood of Porto Praya, viewed from the sea, wears a desolate aspect. The volcanic fires of a past age, and the scorching heat of a tropical sun, have in most places rendered the soil unfit for vegetation. The country rises in successive steps of table-land, interspersed with some truncate conical hills, and the horizon is bounded by an irregular chain of more lofty mountains. ”

“ By him was initiated the Sociedade Silva Porto, a society whose members are students who go into the country every summer to study art from nature, and hold annual exhibitions of their work in the well-lighted Salon of the Illustraçao Portuguez at the top of the big building of the chief daily paper of Lisbon, O Seculo. The taste for art is diligently propagated by the critics of this and other journals. ”

“ Here we crossed in a boat over a small branch of the Tiber to the Sacred Isle, a good Gascon league in length, where we found plenty of grazing land and divers ruins and columns of marble, which are abundant in all the parts about Porto, where stood the ancient city built by Trajan. Every day something of the kind is dug up by the Pope’s workmen [Pg 130] and sent to Rome. ”

“ But for want of vegetation in its neighbourhood, a more picturesque little bay than Porto Grande can hardly be conceived. Towering a short distance above the town, is a kind of table mountain, some 2,500 feet high; and at the opposite side, forming the south-west entrance, is another very lofty one, remarkable as representing the colossal profile of a man lying on his back, à la Prometheus. ”

“ Almeida might long have defied any efforts which the Portugueze or the Spaniards in that quarter could have made against it; it was, however, gladly delivered up, in conformity to the convention, and the garrison were marched to Porto, under a British escort, there to be embarked. ♦Tumults at Porto.♦ On the day of their arrival, they employed themselves in converting as much of their plunder as possible into money: purchasers were not wanting, and their market continued the whole day and night, horses being the ostensible articles. ”

“ On Wednesday, the 8th of August, we came in sight of Porto Santo. The first appearance of land always produces a degree of interest in the ship even to sailors, but to passengers it is generally the cause of great excitement. In the afternoon we saw Madeira, [1] and on the following day we rounded the west end of the island, and stood for Funchal Roads, having passed along the north side in order that Captain Owen might ascertain its length, which he found to be thirty-four miles ”

“ The harbour consisted of the outer basin, or Porto di Miseno, protected by moles, of which remains still exist, and the present Mare Morto, separated from it by a comparatively modern embankment. The town lay on the south side of the outer harbour, near the village of Miseno, where remains of a theatre and baths and the inscriptions relating to the town have been found. ”

“ The capital, of the same name, lies in the interior parts of the country, and is the see of the bishop of all the Cape-Verd islands. This isle is divided into eleven parishes, and the most populous of these contains about four thousand houses, so that it is but very thinly inhabited.
Porto-Praya stands on a steep rock, to which we climbed by a serpentine path. Its fortifications are old decayed walls on the sea side, and fences, scarce breast-high, made of loose stones, towards the land. A small church is inclosed within these walls, towards the sea ”

“ After the suppression of piracy the islanders came down to the marina, or coast, and established themselves in the towns of Porto Ferrajo, Porto Longone, Marciana, and Rio. The resources of the island are considerable, and afford plenty of occupation to fishermen, salt-makers, wine-growers, and gardeners. The inhabitants are hospitable, and, though neighbours of the fierce Corsicans, they possess all the gentleness of Tuscans. ”

“ PORTO ALEGRE, a city and port of Brazil, capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, at the northern extremity of Lagôa dos Patos on the eastern shore of an estuary called Rio Guahyba, about 160 m. from the port of Rio Grande do Sul at the entrance to the lake. The population which contains a large foreign element, chiefly German and Italian, was returned as 73,574 by the census of 1900, including some outlying districts not within urban limits. ”

“ The posts and telegraphs in Portugal yield the State a steady yearly surplus of several hundred contos.
[19] See Joaquim de Vasconcellos, A Ceramica portuguesa. Porto, 1894. In 1905 the export of azulejos was 53 tons (of which 37 went to Brazil) .
[20] In an old chronicle a British force having landed to help a Portuguese army in the siege of a town, one of the besiegers, to inform the besieged of the fact, asks sarcastically if they are in need of cloth from England.
[21] Commerce is not more flourishing than industry. ”

“ April.♦ column, under Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell (who had escaped from the carnage at Porto) , he sent to the bridge of Vouga. That river (the Vacca of the ancients) rises in the Serra de Alcoba, and having received the Portugueze Agueda, which brings an equal volume of waters, enters the Lake of Aveiro, and forms a harbour there not less beautiful than singular: it is separated from the sea by two long wings of sand, and if the entrance were but good, would be perhaps the most commodious and capacious in Europe. ”

“ I know few more characteristic thoroughfares than the road by the river-side at Oporto, called the Ribeira, which is the centre of maritime activity of the port. The path runs beneath what was the ancient river-wall, now pierced or burrowed out to form caverns of shops, where wine and food, cordage and clothing are sold to sailor men. Many of the open doors have vine trellises before them, in the shade of which quaintly garbed groups forgather, and a constant tide of men and women flows along the path, eddying into and out of the cavernous recesses in the ancient wall. ”

“ Being desirous of procuring some intelligence, the Dutch asked many questions about the country, but could only get for answer, that Porto was an advanced port to St Sebastian, not marked in the charts, and that they were inhabitants of Rio Janeiro, which lay at the distance of eight miles.1 The Dutch endeavoured to persuade them to go on board the commodore, but they refused, fearing they might be pirates, which frequently used to come upon the coast, and, under pretence of getting fresh water, would land and pillage any of the little towns near the sea. ”

“ Rugged mountains of imposing height rise on three sides of the bay, Porto Grande, and the fourth is protected by the long high coast-line of the neighbouring island, San Antonio. Standing out in the entrance of the bay is the conical Birds’ Rock, looking as if designed by nature for the lighthouse it carries. The colouring is indescribable: all the nearer mountains are what can only be termed a glowing red, which, as distance increases, softens into heliotrope. On the edge of the bay and at the foot of the eastern hills lies the town of Mindello. ”

“ Here is a smart schooner hailing from the Cornish port of Fowey, from which stockfish from Newfoundland is being landed on the heads of women, flat salt slabs as hard and dry as wood, but good nutritious food for all that; and farther along, with their prows to the shore, rest a dozen un-ladened wine and fruit boats from up the Douro, and flat-bottomed passenger skiffs into which women and men with baskets and bundles, representing their week’s supplies purchased in Oporto, are crowding to be carried back to their homes in the rich vineyard villages miles up the river. ”

“ Burly, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone,
Thou animated torrid-zone! ”

“ The town is about 80 m. due west of Porto Alegre, with which it is connected by rail and steamer. The Jacuhy is navigable by small steamers to this place, which was once an important military station and commercial centre. Its military importance has considerably declined through railway extension. The surrounding districts are fertile but only slightly cultivated, and stock-raising is its chief industry. ”

“ Vincent.—Saturday evening, the 28th December, brought us safely into Porto Grande, the great coaling harbour for steamers bound to the South Atlantic, and where as many as twenty steamers a month are now coaled from the coaling establishment of Mr. Miller (also her Majesty's Consul for the Cape Verde Islands) , who has at great expense built a high and low level pier, with large coal stores, a number of iron lighters and screw tugs which are employed to tow the coal barges alongside the steamers ”

“ Chief Towns.—The chief port and the seat of government is Kotonu, the starting-point of a railway to the Niger. An iron pier, which extends well beyond the surf, affords facilities for shipping. Kotonu was originally a small village which served as the seaport of Porto Novo and was burnt to the ground in 1890. ”

“ Not this so-called Raphael, but another picture of the highest interest and beauty, is the principal artistic treasure of the city. In the board-room of Oporto’s most cherished and beneficent institution, the vast charitable organisation called the Misericordia, there hangs a painting that has few, if any, equals in Portugal. ”